A strange force that, had she not vanquished it immediately, she could have given its rightful name: love.
3
The miracle hadn’t been hard work . . .
The three lovers had embraced, touched, caressed, penetrated one another. A leg stroked a rump, an arm slipped into the mêlée, two mouths joined together until a third came to seal them, flesh touched nameless flesh, skin lost its identity but dispensed the ecstasy it could provide with a generosity that was boundless.
At first, even though Baptiste watched Joséphine kiss her female lover without embarrassment, he shuddered when he felt his wife’s eyes following his own lovemaking with Isabelle and held back, not sure whether or not to continue, feeling disapproval moving through the clear zones of civilized consciousness to express an instinctive possessiveness, the product of the primitive brain. Joséphine found it painful to see her man in the arms of a lover, even when that lover was hers. Aware of the contradiction, she called on her own will, ordering it to remedy her reflexes and endure the scene. As a result, it was Joséphine who sometimes directed Baptiste’s moves in relation to Isabelle, just to convince herself that the situation wasn’t out of her control. The three of them clung together, forming an ever more homogeneous trio with every hour that passed.
In the morning, they felt as if the universe had changed. They had left a shrunken, petty world, a maze of prejudices and prohibitions, and entered another, broader, brighter, more open world.
They made love again, gently, weakly, the way you hum a song you’ve previously sung at the top of your voice—more than anything else, it was an excuse to stay in bed.
The women fell fast asleep in each other’s arms.
Isabelle lay in the middle, a sign that she belonged to the two of them.
He slid toward her, pressed his nose against her wrist, and breathed in deeply, going from her elbow up to her armpit, and lingering in the soft hollow of her neck, storing her scent, ordering his brain to keep its imprint, to associate it forever with sensuality. Much to his surprise, he already wanted Isabelle to be a part of his future.
Sated with pleasure, but still hungry, he got impetuously out of bed. Satisfaction had advantageously replaced sleep. He hadn’t made love several times in one night for a long time, and had almost forgotten it was possible—living with the same woman for fifteen years, you are so lulled by the rhythm of conjugal life that you lose the sense of urgency. This past night had reminded him that desire doesn’t end with orgasm but outlives it and even continues to affirm itself beyond its own strength.
Still, the freshness Baptiste felt this morning was due to an essential lightening: he had shed the burden of jealousy. His intellect had always shunned such insecurity, but now it had vanished completely.
He walked to his computer, using his Encyclopedia of Love as an excuse to switch it on, found the entry on Fidelity, and quickly improvised:
Is there anything more foolish than the kind of fidelity that frustrates us? True fidelity consists in the following promise: I will give you as much tomorrow as today. That’s love! It certainly isn’t: I will give only to you and no longer give to others. Is parsimonious love, miserly love, love that excludes, still love? What kind of inconsistency is it that demands that loyalty should amputate us? How has society linked commitment to chastity outside the couple? After all, there’s no connection between constancy and abstinence. There are spouses who end up not having sex anymore: is that fidelity? There are spouses who end up hating and despising each other: is that fidelity? I think infidelity comes down to forgetting your oath to love your spouse for the rest of your life. But I still love Joséphine as I did, and I also love Isabelle. It’s different. Isn’t it an aberration to reduce love to a couple?
He got up and went to the window, which looked out on Place d’Arezzo. A parrot was courting a pretty, multicolored female macaw, while a lawn-green parakeet watched.
Why do we confuse love and reproduction? Of course, you need a male and a female to reproduce. But we are not just reproducing animals. Outside procreation, why is a couple necessary? Why has it been established as a unique model?
Absurd!
Baptiste walked back to his desk and switched off his computer, knowing he wouldn’t publish what he had just written, then went to the kitchen to prepare a gargantuan breakfast. It was important to lay the table, warm the croissants, make scrambled eggs and pancakes. After a night that had gratified his manhood to such an extent, he didn’t want to seem like a male chauvinist to his two lovers. He felt it was an essential expression of his feminine side to stand over the stove for a bit.
The trio blossomed. Every night was as dazzling as the first. During the day, Isabelle and Joséphine were together in the hours when Isabelle wasn’t working. At last engrossed in his Encyclopedia of Love, Baptiste wrote about various topics—caress, kiss, Don Juan syndrome—with new authority.
Isabelle and he were slowly getting used to one another. Whenever Joséphine was absent, they would feel terribly shy, becoming aware of the gap between their sexual intimacy and a psychological intimacy as untouched as fresh snow. They didn’t know each other’s backstory. Although you could guess Baptiste’s sensitivity from his books, he had characteristics—times when he was reserved, or cheerful, or had qualms about something—that Isabelle hadn’t suspected.
As they got to know each other, Joséphine became worried. Although it was she herself who had wanted this threesome, she had trouble accepting it, realizing that this experience took away her exclusive rights to Baptiste, and to Isabelle. She feared that, by making everything common property, she would lose everything. She was overcome with doubts, sometimes painful ones: if Isabelle and Baptiste were away from her for an hour, she thought they would leave without her; if they lingered in bed after she had gotten up, she imagined them taking advantage of her absence and would go back without warning, a questioning look on her face.
A burst of enthusiasm when she boasted about this incredible success—an actual threesome—would be followed by unjustified fits of anger.
Baptiste suggested they talk about it. “The three of us won’t be able to live together unless we use our intelligence. We have to speak out, Joséphine, we have to say when we feel frustrated, unhappy, or sad.”
When he said this, Joséphine rushed into his arms. “I’m sorry, Baptiste, I’m sorry. I’ve ruined what existed before, I’ve ruined the great love the two of us had.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Baptiste said, struggling with his own emotions. “Our love is still there, only in a different form.”
“I’ve destroyed everything!”
“Let’s be constructive. Even though there are three of us now, we still have our couple. Isabelle is fully aware that she’s the additional element. As a matter of fact, I don’t know how she stands it.”
“You and I are for life, Baptiste.”
“And this is the proof.”
They kissed, and were soon joined by Isabelle. Joséphine recovered that playful, insolent mood of hers, which they all needed so much.
One evening, as the three of them were making dinner and chatting, Baptiste was just putting a tray of lasagne in the oven when he suddenly remembered something. “My God! The lecture!”
Joséphine dropped her knife. “I forgot to remind you.” She rushed to get her diary. “It’s in twenty minutes, at the Centre des Congrès.”
“Tell them you’re sick,” Isabelle suggested.
“I’d sooner drop dead!” Baptiste cried.
Joséphine grabbed Isabelle’s hand to stop her. “Baptiste never cancels. It would make him sicker to miss an event than to go there with flu, or even dying.”
He had already gone into the bedroom to change, while Joséphine called a taxi.
“Would you like us to come with you?” Isabelle asked.
Baptiste was about to answer yes, but before he c
ould, Joséphine said, “Oh, no, we’ll only get in his way. Besides, frankly, after fifteen years, I know all the questions, all the answers, all the stories he’s going to tell. What a bore!”
“You’re so clever, why don’t you go instead of me?” Baptiste growled, struggling with his cuff links.
Joséphine burst out laughing. “Don’t panic. You’ll be perfect.”
When he got to the venue, Baptiste walked in through the stage door but saw no one, called out in the deserted corridors, then decided to go up to the lobby on the upper floor. There, he spotted some movement. No sooner did they see him than the organizers rushed to him, nervous and agitated. They’re going to tell me they haven’t sold a single ticket, Baptiste thought, relieved at the thought that he could leave again.
On the contrary, they laughed, already tipsy, and told him that it was a full house, and that no lecture had attracted such a large audience in ten years. Not only were there eight hundred people in the auditorium, but television screens had been placed in two adjacent rooms, since a total of one thousand two hundred people had bought tickets to see and hear Baptiste.
He felt like running away: he hadn’t prepared anything.
“Do you happen to have an office where I can be alone for a while?”
“What? Aren’t you going to have a drink with us?”
Baptiste looked at the merry, blotchy-faced mayor, who was kindly handing him a glass, and nearly told him that if he stepped onstage in his state, there would be no audience at all next time.
“Later . . . ” he muttered, with a conspiratorial smile that seemed to suggest that all kinds of madness would be possible after the event.
Having paid tribute to the general good mood, he was taken to a room where he could prepare.
What is the purpose of literature? said the program.
Baptiste folded a piece of paper in two, and scribbled on it. Like a pianist who jots down the chords on which he is going to improvise, he established the points he was planning to tackle. An author addressing a crowd is more like a jazz musician than a classical composer: instead of writing a text and performing it, he must create a unique experience for the audience by taking risks, digressing, landing back on his feet, grabbing whatever formula pops up, and letting the emotion of the moment color an idea before bouncing back with a change of tone or rhythm. It wasn’t out of disrespect but, rather, respect for the public, that Baptiste never wrote out his lectures. In the past, every time he had handed in a prepared speech, it had lost all life when he had read it in a drone on the stage, his nose glued to the page, dull and devoid of presence. As a reader, he didn’t touch people’s hearts: they had the impression that the real Baptiste had stayed at home and sent his twin brother, who was less lively, less sparkling, and just stammered his words in his place. Baptiste had drawn the conclusion that he was a poor interpreter of himself.
On the other hand, when, taken by surprise or having misplaced his papers, he had had to improvise, he had brought the house down. For a writer, to speak the way he writes isn’t about reading a prewritten text, but finding in front of an audience the same inventive boldness he has when he’s alone, demonstrating a mind in action. What he has to show is the fire, not the cold object; the work process, not the result.
That Saturday evening, Baptiste knew he had to have the self-assurance to show himself off in his workshop. That was where the difficulty lay: recently, he had acquired confidence in his ability to seduce and to give and receive pleasure, but he had neglected his second job—that of the writer who speaks on behalf of the writer who writes.
They came to get him. He walked into the auditorium to wild applause.
He was immediately encouraged by the faces focused on him. He soared on the wings of inspiration, moving between naïveté and high culture—neither his naïveté nor his culture was fake, although both were part of the act.
An hour later, the audience gave him an ovation, and he was led into the lobby for a book signing.
Several people in the field kept him company around his table: representatives from his publishing house, a bookseller, and Faustina, the publicist he liked as a character out of fiction but wasn’t drawn to, because he always expected her to go too far and replace humor with nastiness, witty remarks with malicious gossip.
As he signed his initials in the books, Faustina and her colleagues showed him such attentive, even exaggerated politeness that he detected a hint of pity.
What’s so pathetic about me? Was my lecture ridiculous?
Everybody was fussing over him, making sure he was fine, offering him food, drink, cigarettes, whatever he wanted. The bookseller kept complimenting him on the power he exercised over the women whose books he signed.
“You really can seduce anyone you like, Monsieur Monier.”
“They’re crazy about him,” Faustina added.
“Here’s a man who couldn’t stay single even for a couple of days.”
“Actually, I have a friend,” Faustina continued, “probably one of the most beautiful women I know—and rich and intelligent to boot—whose dream is to meet you, Baptiste. You’re the only man she desires. Shall I introduce you? No strings attached . . . ”
“Stop bothering Monsieur Monier, Faustina. He knows what he wants. All he has to do is click his fingers and the women will come running.”
Baptiste suddenly realized what was going on: they thought Joséphine was cheating on him. She and Isabelle must have been smooching on the streets, and a rumor had started. He looked at the people around him as, lips pursed, they leaned over him with expressions of commiseration.
Now I know how people look at a deceived husband, he thought, struggling not to burst into a fit of the giggles.
A week later, in the middle of the afternoon, the doorbell rang.
Baptiste went to open the door and was surprised to find Joséphine and Isabelle on the landing. “What’s the matter? Don’t you have your keys?”
Joséphine pointed at the large number of bags and suitcases cluttering the landing as far as the staircase. “We have to ask your permission for something.”
Her submissive tone suggested a little girl begging her parents to allow her to go out.
“What?”
Joséphine indicated Isabelle, who was leaning against the wall, looking ravaged, not knowing whether to smile or cry. “She’s moved out.”
Baptiste was worried that Isabelle might have been physically abused. “Did you have a row? Did he insult you? Did he throw you out?”
Isabelle came closer and said in a breathless, trembling voice, “My husband doesn’t know yet. I’ve left a letter on the kitchen table. He’ll find it when he comes home tonight.” She didn’t dare touch Baptiste, even though she wanted to. “I can’t bear to keep living there,” she stammered. “It’s not my place anymore. I . . . ”
She couldn’t finish her sentence, and Joséphine completed it for her. “She’d like to live with us. Is that all right with you?”
Baptiste was surprised by the way the scene was unfolding. Was it the writer in him who was astonished? Wondering more about the form than the content, he pointed to the bags. “I get the impression you’ve both already made your decision without me.”
“Not at all,” Joséphine protested indignantly. “That’s why I rang the bell. To ask you to welcome Isabelle, not to force her on you.”
“What were you planning to do if I refused?”
“I’d put all the stuff in the basement and we’d look for a studio apartment nearby.”
“I won’t live with my husband anymore,” Isabelle said firmly.
Baptiste shook his head. “It’s just that . . . forget about my answer . . . I find the way this is being done lacks . . . ”
“Lacks what?” Joséphine exclaimed.
“Romance.”
The two women burst out l
aughing. Shocked, Baptiste took a step back.
“No, Baptiste, don’t be offended. We’re laughing because we were sure you were going to say that.”
Trying to be serious, Isabelle said, “It’s true, Joséphine predicted your reaction.”
Joséphine pointed her index finger at Baptiste. “I remember when I proposed to you: I was wearing a shower cap—you hate shower caps—and polishing my nails—and you can’t stand cotton wool between the toes. You were so shocked that I should choose a moment when I looked such a fright, you didn’t even reply.” Sardonically, she turned to Isabelle. “His lordship is actually quite sentimental in real life. He may seek out unconventional situations for his books, but he expects his life to be like a Hollywood B movie.”
“Have you finished making fun of me, Joséphine?”
Baptiste’s putting a stop to his wife’s chatter made her realize she had veered away from the main subject.
He turned to Isabelle. “Isabelle, I’m delighted that you’re coming to live with us. I’ve been hoping you would since that first evening. You’ve only waited—”
“A week!” she cried, rushing into his arms.
Joséphine also came up to him and whispered in his ear, “I’m so proud of you, my Baptiste. You’re the freest man I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not free, since I’m your slave.”
“That’s exactly what I meant.”
They picked up the bags and swept into the apartment, trying to figure out how to reorganize it so as to live there as a threesome.
4
Lying on a reclining bed, Victor watched as his blood flowed into various glass tubes. The nurse worked skillfully, taking a series of samples while keeping a benevolent eye on Victor.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“No, not at all, thank you. I’m used to it.”
The nurse nodded, affected by what she had guessed on seeing which tests had been ordered.
The Carousel of Desire Page 28